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* I don’t know which is more amazing: the notion that zombies have invaded northern Vermont

The pranksters, well-versed in the genre and public hysteria, linked the zombies with the so-called ’swine flu’ and warned motorists to “Turn Back!!!” (photo by Alison Redlich, ©2009 Alison Redlich/Burlington Free Press)

This isn’t the first zombie invasion of Vermont, you know.

Shot in and about Proctor, VT, Zombie Town may not be Vermont’s first zombie feature — that honor may belong, in part, to Caleb Emerson’s Die You Zombie Bastards! (2005). That patchwork Zombastic Productions Inc. crazyquilt was primarily a Gloucester, MA-based production but reportedly shot sequences in and around Brattleboro and Guilford, VT.

But Zombie Town is our first all-VT zombie feature, so there you go.

It’s a fun little movie, on its own terms, and not to be confused with the British TV short film Zombietown (1995) or Nicholas Aubrey’s brand-new Zombie Town: The Movie (2009), neither of which I’ve seen as yet, nor Dan Hoskins’ classic-to-some (not me) shot-in-California Troma pickup Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1989), or the board games Zombie Town and Zombie Town 2: Road Rage Expansion.

So, except no imitations, avoid Colchester VT this week, and go for the Edgewood gold!

* Of course, some parts of this God-blessed Union of ours are completely safe from any possible zombie invasion from the Green Mountain State. This is due to the fact that

We Godless Yankees have gone and done it again!

Now, I’m not sure what that even means. ‘Banned Vermont’ – huh???

What, no more maple syrup in your kitchen?

No more Vermont cheddar cheese in your fridge? No more Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in your freezer? All Morgan horses will be shot dead? What???

Personally, I’m hoping this means cannibal Confederates won’t be eating Vermont yankees anymore if they come into town during the Bicentennial celebration, like in 2000 Maniacs (1964). Why, they’d spit us right out.

(Man, that is a huge relief, let me tell ya. I’ve been worrying about that dire fate since I was traumatized by that movie at the tender age of ten.) 

Hell, Vermont has more in common with the deep South than any other northern state. We’ve been wanted to secede from the Union longer than you have!

Not to mention, those flatlanders in Connecticut made gay marriage legal before Vermont did — and George W. Bush was born in Connecticut — so, is George W. Bush now banned in the South?

Pretty please? With Godless VT maple syrup on top?

By my experience, the American South barely knows Vermont exists.

When my dad bought me my first-ever car down in Florida (my parents have lived down thar since 1976), and I went down with my newly-issued VT license plates to drive the vehicle home up here in the Godless North, my first gas-up in Sarasota was accompanied by the following line:

[Floridian looks at my license plate, eyes me suspiciously:] “Vermont? What state is that in?” 

Well, we’re on the map now, by Jesus!

We’re on the map now to be hated and reviled and banned! You got that? — banned!!! 

My thanks to Bob Smith for bringing this latest news from the grand and glorious South, and never forget the ageless credo: “The Mason-Dixon Line is where the South goes to shit, and the North goes to eat…” (I once saw a Green Beret soldier provoke a brutal fist-fight using that pick-up line).

(Excuse me, I gotta watch Deliverance again and re-innoculate myself with a raw dose of primal homophobia linking woodland rape and cornholing with Southern hillbillies, just to make sure all my media-pumped irrational prejudices are at full-strength toxicity – “squeal, like a pig!”)

This is all crazy shit.

How crazy? Dig it:

Even here in Vermont, there’s an imaginary division line between northern Vermont and southern Vermont — our own Mason-Dixon line, if you will, which I now live on. This has given me a fresh perspective on this kind of regionalism and geographic prejudices, rendered even more absurd for being within the state borders.

Northern Vermont (where I lived for 25 years), with ‘big city’ Burlington and the capitol in Montpelier, acts like southern Vermont doesn’t exist; and down in southern Vermont (where I lived for 26 years), a lot of folks resent northern Vermont and its power base. 

Of course, if the zombie invasion ever does come, it’s likely going to start in southern Vermont, down in Vernon, VT, thanks to some inevitable mishap at Vermont Yankee (the nuclear power plant that should have been decommissioned and off-line years ago).

Y’see, Vermont Yankee is still running thanks to those fuckers in the state government up in northern Vermont, who don’t give a rat’s ass what happens down in southern Vermont.

Furthermore, Vermont Yankee is owned by Louisiana-based Entergy, who care even less what happens up here in Vermont.

Damn, those southern corporate cornpones hate our Yankee asses!

Hell, it’s probably their plan to run Vermont Yankee at 125% capacity until the fucker blows a hole in the state, irradiating all those homo and bull-dyke married couples — them that lives, that is — and if that happens, it was all God’s plan all along, His punishment on them Godless homo-lovin’ rug-muncher Yankees. 

Well and good, until we become zombies and come down there to infect, bite, eat or ream out your puckered-tight Bible-thumped virgin Confederate assholes.

In fact, we might just do all four of them thar things, just to spite ya and spit in God’s eye!

So you see, what goes around, comes around.

This is indeed all crazy shit –

Crazy, crazy shit.

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* Center for Cartoon Studies Pioneer Class Alumni Christine Williamson — who will forever reign as CCS’s first manga-intensive student and alumni, too — has recently scored a gallery showing of her work in New Hampshire.

Artwork from Christine’s thesis project — the illustrated novel (not a graphic novel) Katlyn Zinger and the Hornless Unicorn — will be showcased in the Exeter Public Library’s Children’s room during the months of May and June. (Art, right, ©2008 Christine Williamson.)

Congratulations, Christine, and heads up, Myrant readers — if you are in or about Exeter this spring, be sure to pop in and check out the exhibit.

For my generation, Exeter NH instantly evokes memories of the 1965 UFO flap and the subsequently uncovered 1961 abductions of Betty and Barney Hill. The Hills’ abduction became the first internationally-renowned case of ‘missing time’ and recovered abduction memories via hypnosis,

So, careful when you’re driving down around Exeter, y’hear?

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* And finally, this sweet, sad Chris Ware animation (music by Andrew Bird) graced the new This American Life: Live! (2009) ‘movie’ edition, which played in select theaters across the US in April.

Alas, like the new wave of 3D movies, it played nowhere in reasonable driving distance of homo-brimming, zombie-filled Vermont, but so it goes in the 21st Century.

Hell, I still don’t have the hovercraft and rocket-jet-pack they promised me in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics in the early 1960s…

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.